Thursday, November 13, 2014

Time | "Responsibility for the poor and the marginalized must therefore be an essential element of any political decision"
Pope Francis warned heads of states
attending the annual G20 meeting in Australia about the effects of
“unbridled consumerism” and called on them to take concrete steps to
alleviate unemployment.

In a letter addressed to Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is
chairing this year’s G20 Leaders’ Summit which begins Sunday, the
Pontiff called for its participants to consider that “many lives are at
stake.”

“It would indeed be regrettable if such discussions were to remain
purely on the level of declarations of principle,” Pope Francis wrote in
the letter.

Pope Francis, who has made a habit of addressing the leaders of the
G20 meetings, has often raised his concerns with the global economy.
Last year, in lengthy report airing the views of the Vatican, he
criticized the “idolatry of money” and denounced the unfettered free
market as the “new tyranny.”

In the letter published Tuesday, he said that, like attacks on human
rights in the Middle East, abuses in the financial system are among the
“forms of aggression that are less evident but equally real and
serious.”

“Responsibility for the poor and the marginalized must therefore be
an essential element of any political decision, whether on the national
or the international level,” he wrote.